Los Angeles — UCLA Anderson's Executive MBA program earned the highest rating among public universities in BusinessWeek's first EMBA rankings in a decade. UCLA Anderson is the only business program at a public university to place in the top 10, according to the magazine's Oct. 15 report.

UCLA Anderson placed 10th in the BusinessWeek EMBA rankings, while its Executive Education Program was ranked 19th in the publication's biennial survey of executive education programs.

BusinessWeek surveyed 3,041 students from the 2001 graduating classes at 82 schools to assess the students' satisfaction. The survey of graduates and a poll of program directors each accounted for 50 percent of a school's score. In looking at subject areas, EMBA graduates rated UCLA Anderson in the top five in entrepreneurship and e-business. Students also scored UCLA Anderson No. 8 in the category of leading-edge instructors. They also praised UCLA Anderson's teaching and support for EMBA students.

In addition, Forbes Magazine published its annual rankings of MBA programs Oct. 15. The Forbes "Best Bang for the Buck" report gauges the return on investment students can expect from attending the different business schools.

Forbes ranked UCLA Anderson the 12th best out of the top 25 national business schools in the United States, using out-of-state tuition as the cost basis. As in the BusinessWeek survey, UCLA Anderson placed highest among all of the public universities.

According to Forbes, the downturn of technology sector businesses in California clearly took a toll on B-school graduates and caused all California business schools to fall in the Forbes rankings. UCLA Anderson dropped from 5th place in 2000 to 12th this year. The Haas School of Business at Berkeley, fell from 4th place to 15th place this year. Stanford's ranking dipped from 3rd to 10th.

Forbes based its ranking on a survey of 20,000 graduates from the 25 schools who received MBAs in 1996. The survey asked alumni for salary information from the year before they entered business school, the year they graduated, and 2000. Forbes compared that data with an estimate of what the median student from each school would have earned for those five years without a degree.

For the top 25 schools, the median five-year MBA gain was $85,000 for the class of 1996. The five-year MBA gain for UCLA Anderson was slightly higher — $86,000 — than the median.

In addition to these publications, Computerworld Magazine has named UCLA Anderson among the top 25 B-schools in its Techno-MBA Profile, which will be published in the magazine's Oct. 22 issue.

"As with all of the business school rankings and surveys, we value the feedback offered through the Forbes and BusinessWeek surveys," Dean Bruce G. Willison said. "In fact, we work with the writers and editors of these publications in an effort to get behind the data to better understand and evaluate the responses so that we can continue improving the effectiveness of all our MBA programs."